2 Indian brothers plead not guilty to crypto insider trading in US
Ishan Wahi, 32, a former product manager at cryptocurrency platform Coinbase Global, along with his brother Nikhil Wahi, 26, have pleaded not guilty to federal insider trading charges, media reported.
The lawyer representing Ishan Wahi said the charges against him should be “dismissed” as insider trading must involve securities or commodities, and this case did not, according to reports.
Last month, US authorities charged the brothers and their Indian-American friend Sameer Ramani, 33, of Houston with conspiring to steal confidential information from crypto exchange Coinbase and make $1.5 million in illegal money.
The Wahi brothers were arrested in Seattle, Washington state, where they lived, and arraigned in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington.
Ramani is still at large. Ishan, Nikhil and Ramani are facing a maximum sentence of 20 years each.
Ishan worked at Coinbase as a product manager assigned to a Coinbase asset listing team starting in October 2020.
He was involved in the highly confidential process of listing cryptoassets on Coinbase’s exchanges and had detailed and advanced knowledge of which cryptoassets Coinbase planned to list and the timing of public announcements of those cryptoasset listings.
According to US authorities, on at least 14 occasions, Ishan knew in advance both that Coinbase planned to list certain cryptoassets and the timing of public announcements of those asset listings.
He misused the confidential information from Coinbase by tipping off either his brother, Nikhil, or Ramani, “so that they could make profitable trades in these cryptoassets ahead of Coinbase’s public listing announcements”.
The defendants made illegal trades in at least 25 different crypto-assets and realized ill-gotten gains totaling approximately $1.5 million.
To conceal their purchases of cryptoassets ahead of Coinbase listing announcements, Nikhil and Ramani used accounts at centralized exchanges held in other people’s names, and transferred funds, cryptoassets, and the proceeds of their scheme through multiple anonymous Ethereum blockchain wallets.
“Nikhil and Ramani also regularly created and used new Ethereum blockchain wallets without any prior transaction history to further conceal their involvement in the scheme,” the Justice Department said.
Coinbase responded publicly on Twitter, saying that any Coinbase employee who leaked confidential company information would be “immediately terminated and referred to appropriate authorities (potentially for prosecution).”
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(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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